‘CTE Is Not Real!’

The Jones family is truly one of a kind in the sports world.

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Heavyweight champion, Jon Jones, has been a magnet for controversy throughout his legendary mixed martial arts (MMA) career. In a way, “Bones” has been considered his own worst enemy, thanks to his outside-the-Octagon issues over the years.

Unfortunately for Jones and his family, his younger brother, Chandler Jones, has recently taken some of the spotlight for some bizarre social media posts and an arrest after he was released by the National Football League’s (NFL) Las Vegas Raiders this past September 2023. Jones, 33, has since shared his thoughts on Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), or the lack thereof, which has become a growing problem in contact sports over the past so many decades.

“I don’t know the other two words in the acronym CTE, but I know the T stands for trauma,” Jones said on the JAXXON PODCAST (h/t Bloody Elbow). “I know it’s not blunt force trauma. I know it doesn’t also mean that you got hit in the head too many times. It doesn’t mean that. CTE is not real. I don’t believe it’s real.

“The T in trauma could be being molested as a kid, from things that you went through from high school,” he continued. “That could be mental trauma, emotional trauma, but not blunt force, got punched in the head, too many tackles.”

Jones prefaced his thoughts by noting that he and his fellow former NFL player, Antonio Brown (also no stranger to controversy), might make an entire podcast centered around CTE being fake … because the media has speculated that they suffer from it.

“There’s ways that the media, they put out what Donald Trump says, fake news,” Jones said. “There’s ways that people put out fake news and say, ‘Let’s scare this group of people. Let’s scare these athletes.’

“Before I got out of the NFL… when I heard CTE, they had me tackling (timidly),” he continued. “Before I heard the word CTE, I was banging. Mark my words: in 2050, there would be no NFL. It’s getting too soft.”

Over Jones’ 10 years in the NFL, he played for three teams and won a Super Bowl with the New England Patriots at the end of the 2014 season. While a career in fighting might not necessarily be in the cards for Jones at this stage, he’d do quite well if he wanted to, according to big brother, Jon.